First class

I don't know how to feel after this first class.

It feels like most of the women know each other. Most of them have at least a couple of years of practice. Only another girl (who is quite pretty, but... 1. I don't know her age other than she's older than 18, and 2. I feel absolutely nothing) is starting out. 

***

Like the first time I came to dance here, I was stressed as can be, though obviously, since I know Hikianalia looks to be relatively safe and the Argo group was here, I was not as apprehensive. 

But while I sat next to Argo during the waiting, they remained within each other. I was not part of it. On the other side, a bigger group, probably the ones who knew each other. I noticed the girl behind them, but I did not go. I had no wish to.

When Hikianalia invited us in, I tried to look composed, I was nervously pacing because I wanted to get going and move, but I also couldn't help but hold my arms or cross them. I have trouble being spontaneous even though I am talkative. I talk too much, I feel. I feel that my questions are too detailed, though Hikianalia doesn't judge it and I hold myself back ("I'll shut up because otherwise we'll still be talking about this tomorrow morning" lol). 

I just hate existing. I hate feeling people's eyes on me. Even if they don't judge, even if they probably don't care if I'm dead or alive tomorrow and may never. I hate it. The only person I want to exist for is Hikianalia, kinda, because she's the one who teaches. I don't mean that I have to become her teacher's pet, this is not what I'm referring to, but right now... this is the only person I really come for. The others? Unsafe until proven otherwise and this shit will take a while if it ever happens.

***

Hikianalia made us introduce ourselves. With our name and our dance history. She said that she expects to have a good atmosphere in the group, that she doesn't want to hear neither swearing nor us putting each other/ourselves down (touché x2. I both cuss like a sailor especially when I'm stressed, and I can't help but want to cry and say to everyone how absolute of a dumbass I am and how I am too stupid to learn anything). That she wants us to make friendships within the group, even if not necessarily BFFs.

Good Lord.

I remembered when I did gym at seven. How the girls did not like me. How in my horse riding clubs I did make friends every time, but I was generally not liked by the others. I was the "weird" one. I know I'm an adult and this is not the same context, but I just... I'm not what I used to be as a teen. 

At the time it felt like it was just... normal? Or part of how things were, and I didn't think much of it?

***

I was merely sad when I did gym. I was not asking myself the why they don't like me, I just knew I was terrible, and that both my teacher and the girls lost patience with me. I was afraid to do the exercises because I was stiff and (understandably, for a beginner) in pain, all the while the others were supple and graceful. Teacher said "you're stiff as a piece of wood". I can hear it twenty years later.

When I got into horse riding, I was too overjoyed about the horses to really care this much about how others saw me, though again, I could feel their eyes. I could feel how they were judging me, putting me aside for the most part. How they thought of me as weird. And again, I was just merely sad. I went for the horses, for the friends I could make, too. 

But nothing like what I experience today. No tension. No trembling. No nausea. No urge to cry because the words "making friends" feels like it's going to be impossible for me, because while I can get myself liked, as adults, people have expectations of you. If you make friends, you have to show up. 

And I want to.

I also only show up if my heart is in it, or if I feel safe.

That last part is exactly what I can't feel anymore. Safe.

I'm constantly expecting the other shoe to drop. I know that there's a literal rule about not judging or putting each other down, but I expect a look if I don't do it right, from the more experienced ones. If I take too long to finish. If I break the flow. 

I joke around to try and calm myself down, though as I said, I'm holding back a whole damn lot because nobody else in the group seems to be as prone to comment quickly as I am. 

I talk too much, or I just observe people from the sidelines, staying silent. And with what happened, as I said, I just have a stone in place of the heart.

Like that cute girl, I can't feel anything towards her, even though I found her pretty. I have not spoken to her. I only know her name, and that she's the other one who is just starting out. And I'd have no excuse to talk to her. Nor visceral pull that makes me want to go there.

It's Hopoe and no one else. 

I miss when I would come into a group and immediately crush on a girl, even if it may or may not be reciprocated. Crushes give me a reason to come. Something to wonder about.

The problem is that I've encountered my aikane already. And that said aikane, in addition to being something entirely different from what I had experienced thus far... was also the one to finish me off. And I'd still take her back if she came changed.

My heart is taken. Even if I would put my flower on the right.

By the way. Hikianalia's flower was on the right even though she's married. 

***

There's something about her that got sort of confirmed: she takes her time. She says it. "I take my time". Even when she was born, she said, it took a loooot of time for her to come out. Her mom didn't say how long, but it took a while. So, her actual name means "the one who takes her time". How to live up to your name! 

It's so strange for me to ever think of "taking my time".

Taking my time is foreign to me. Insane how I operate on a tremendously slow pace, but when I have to do something, I do it quick, and I have to get good quick, otherwise stress rises and I cry and I want to give up and I endlessly beat myself up inside. 

As I grew up, while as a child I seemed to have had a fairly slow pace despite being precocious and thus quicker in learning and advancing than other kids, I learned that if you're not going fast, people are going to lose it with you.

I had a classmate named Victor back when I was six. That's his real name, it's a common enough name that nobody could track the guy down. 

Victor was slow. Meanwhile, I was the "tank engine" of the class, according to the teacher who apparently loved me (I can however remember the "badly written, to be redone!" written in red over certain copies, and the "??" next to poorly done letters... and the fact I never ever had "excellent work" written on my papers). I was the top student, or at least in the top ones. We were kind of friendly with each other, though I had a sort of male best friend, then a female best friend and a group with two other girls. 

And once, Victor lied that he had been to Australia on a bus when asked about where he went on vacation. Teacher then called him "Aussie Victor" during all the school year. And since he was slow, he would always say "Victor, hurry up". He even joked about recording it on a tape and playing it over and over to him.

Considering I myself got bullied by a teacher a few years down the line, alongside another boy from my class, I can't even imagine what the poor guy must've felt.

How he must've grown up with the idea that he was a dunce.

I hope he's doing well now.

***

I guess that perhaps it left a stain on me, even if as a six-year-old, I had not a single word nor a single concept to describe what was going on. I still have no idea to this day if it's really the social pressure to be efficient and quick, or if it's part of my nature since my mind has a naturally intuitive pace, but going slow feels either excruciating or it feels straight up unsafe.

Excruciating because all I want is to get down to business. If I have the gist of it, make me do it. I literally have to make an effort to listen to explanations (and if I don't know a step, I definitely do, because I DO want to know properly!), because I want to move. I'm all wound-up like a racehorse ready to run. 

Unsafe because the longer I take to do something, or the longer someone can see me, the more the likelihood of them losing patience with me or finding out something that will make them straight up not ever want to see me again, or just dislike me, or just not want me in their life anymore all the while it seems to go well, approaches 1. 

I didn't tell Hikianalia tonight, but I'm terrified that in spite of her being easygoing and "taking her time", and even explaining to me that some take years to get comfortable with this or that dance move, she will lose her patience with me. 

I mean. When I learned how to drive, I was especially having trouble with the gear stick. I had to focus on my driving, how could I learn how to shift gears at the same time of doing everything, all the while having to survive the next remark that would make me feel even more exposed? 

And many times, the instructors would tell me:

Hi'iaka, you should consider going automatic. It will be easier for you. I'm also talking, financially. You pay all the time for those lessons... 

I always refused. I even categorically did so. 

But every time I was told that, it felt like a blow in the chest. 

I was not good enough. I was too slow. I was a burden. I was too stupid. It just would make me feel even worse about myself.

The truth is, driving schools want to send you as quick as possible to the exam. They don't really care that you're comfortable driving or feeling ready: if you can halfway do it and not kill yourself, they send you there.

Most people take thirty-ish hours to pass. I took more than sixty, in three different schools. The first one, two out of the four instructors were assholes (and funny enough, the little fat bitch had the exact same first name as Hopoe), the second, my instructor was great as a person but we'd talk too much and she was a bit too hard on me. 

She didn't care that I was shaking when I went on the highway for the first time. She sent me there, I reacted horribly, when we came out of it, it took me 20 minutes for my heart rate to go down. And then she was always making remarks that I was not in "the moment", but "moment minus one". Well duh, I am in fucking fight-or-flight. We had a bad scare on the last lesson I had with her and she... told me, on the way back, that a thirteen-year-old girl got her legs cut off by a truck recently.

Lovely as a person otherwise. But oh Jesus can you be more tone deaf as a teacher to a sensitive student?

In the third school, it was mostly okay, even if I often had an annoying teacher. I hate how they take a "fun" tone because I'm young. Either way, I had an okay level already so it only took me four-ish months to reach the point where I got to the exam.

I got it on the first try, and I only drove automatic once because one of the manual cars had broken down and I had to use an automatic instead. 

My car is manual, and I only have trouble with shifting gears if I'm tired or distracted.

***

We worked on the ta'iri type of steps today. Those are basically your hips hitting around. I have less trouble with fluid steps rather than the sharp ones, and I could feel it. It feels like my brain knows how to do things but not my body and it makes me sad and absolutely stresses me out.

But Hikianalia does not trigger me. And I guess that's enough. It's not her who triggers me the most, it's the fact I have no idea how to be terrible at something. 

I was always the kid who "got it" fast. Gifted kid problem. But whenever things started requiring effort... I started losing confidence, and so did the teachers.

So again, this got burned into my memory. Durably.

***

I might ask her more questions this week. But I don't want to be too invasive.

I do want us to have a good relationship. I'm not just looking for a teacher. I like my teacher to be my mentor. I've always yearned for one.

But whether Hikianalia would even be willing to is not something I can tell.

Whether the other girls would ever include me fully in the group and whether I will not remain some "outlier", because I appear too independent and thus aloof, or because I don't know, there's something repulsive about me, perhaps, is not something I can ever tell.

I want to believe I can have my mentor and my community.

But to want to believe and to actually have the heart in it is another thing.

...And with this heart, gone... I don't even know if I can.

Just. 

Hikianalia, just give me the fucking steps, I'll do them, I'll study the hell out of this shit, even if we usually learn it without words, even if I should've learned it without words or rules per say way longer ago, but make me move so I don't think about all of this.

Just, the minute I will finally open up, and perhaps tell you about my journey, or share something regarding being a student, or a teacher,

don't let me down.

In the meantime, I hope I'm not making a bad impression.